interesting. And thus the coincidence between that conduct
which maximises my happiness and that conduct which maximises happiness
in general, must be regarded as more or less accidental or liable in
special cases to disappear. If I am made happier by action which makes
others miserable, the rule of utility will lead to my preference of
myself.

Here we have the question whether the Utilitarian system be essentially
a selfish system. Bentham, with his vague psychology, does not lay down
the doctrine absolutely. After giving this list of self-regarding
'springs of action,' he proceeds to add the pleasures and pains of
'sympathy' and 'antipathy' which, he says, are not self-regarding.
Moreover, as we have seen, he has some difficulty in denying that
'benevolence' is a necessarily moral motive: it is only capable of
prompting to bad conduct in so far as it is insufficiently enlightened;
and it is clear that a moralist who makes the 'greatest happiness of the
greatest number' his universal test, has some reason for admitting as an
elementary pleasure the desire for the greatest happiness. This comes
out curiously in the _Constitutional Code_. He there lays down the
'self-preference principle'--the principle, namely, that 'every human
being' is determined in every action by his judgment of what will
produce the greatest happiness to himself, 'whatsoever be the effect ...
in relation to the happiness of other similar beings, any or all of them
taken together.'[471] Afterwards, however, he observes that it is 'the
constant and arduous task of every moralist' and of every legislator who
deserves the name to 'increase the influence of sympathy at the expense
of that of self-regard and of sympathy for the greater number at the
expense of sympathy for the lesser number.'[472] He tries to reconcile
these views by the remark 'that even sympathy has its root in
self-regard,' and he argues, as Mr. Herbert Spencer has done more fully,
that if Adam cared only for Eve and Eve only for Adam--neither caring at
all for himself or herself--both would perish in less than a year.
Self-regard, that is, is essential, and sympathy supposes its existence.
Hence Bentham puts himself through a catechism.[473] What is the 'best'
government? That which causes the greatest happiness of the given
community. What community? 'Any community, which is as much as to say,
every community.' But _why_ do you desire this happiness? Because the
establishment of